Effects Of A Flash-Pak on a Kilrathi Dreadnought

Mjr. Whoopass

Mjr. Whoopass

<FONT color=lightblue><B>I was going to say someth
In another thread, there was some speculation as to what would happen if a Flash-Pak was used on a Kilrathi Dreadnought. I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but it seems we have enough evidence in the wcnews.com ships database to resolve rather conclusively whether or not the entire ship would be destroyed. I'll post the data here. Since I'm not sure how exactly to interpret the data (especially the relevence of "Core Strength"), I'll hope someone who can will.
Kilrathi Dreadnought
Shields=8,000 cm
Front Armor=1500 cm
Rear Armor=1500 cm
Right/Left Armor=1500 cm
Core Strength=80,000 cm
Flash-Pak
Damage=60,000 cm

As I said before, I'm not sure how the "Core Strength" of the Dreadnought applies to how the ship would be destroyed. Obviously if it's not necessary to damage the entire Core Strength, then even if it's necessary for the Flash-Pak to damage the entire ship in order to leave the whole thing as a burnt out hull, the entire combined shield and armor strength would be a mere 12,500 cm Vs. the overwhelming 60,000 cm of damage a Flash-Pak produces. If it's necessary to destroy the entire Core Strength after the shields and armor, then a Flash-Pak would leave 32,500 cm of the Dreadnought's core strength left over after destroying shields and armor. IF it survives, it's probably still debatable (and possibly with no conclusive answers) as to how combat effective it would be or even if it would be worth limping home for repairs. However, at least we will know whether it's completely destroyed or not. So if someone knows how to factor the Core Strenth data, we should have a conclusive answer.
 
The large size of the dreadnaught may cause the flashpak to not destroy the entire ship but maybe only part of it. Without knowing the size of the Ella Superbase it is hard to prove this theory, but it seems a bit of a stretch to assume that a single flashpak could superheat the entire atmosphere of a dreadnaught.
 
Well, I would assume the fact that the Flash-Pak has a damage rating in cm's (though I'm not sure how they obtained that statistic) implies that it would destroy ships that don't have enough cm strength to withstand it. I think we have to assume that's the case, because what else is the cm statistic used for?
 
The "damage rating" for the flashpak is just how the weapon is treated by gameplay - since no matter the in-universe effect, everything in the game is basically just a big torpedo. The T-Bomb works the same way - it has some insanely high number assigned to it, and then Kilrah itself has some big number of centimeters of damage it can take.

Flashpaks *aren't* torpedoes in the way we know them -- two of them won't do twice as much damage... they either heat the ship up until the atmosphere ignites or they don't.
 
Mjr. Whoopass said:
Obviously if it's not necessary to damage the entire Core Strength, then even if it's necessary for the Flash-Pak to damage the entire ship in order to leave the whole thing as a burnt out hull, the entire combined shield and armor strength would be a mere 12,500 cm Vs. the overwhelming 60,000 cm of damage a Flash-Pak produces. If it's necessary to destroy the entire Core Strength after the shields and armor, then a Flash-Pak would leave 32,500 cm of the Dreadnought's core strength left over after destroying shields and armor. IF it survives, it's probably still debatable (and possibly with no conclusive answers) as to how combat effective it would be or even if it would be worth limping home for repairs. However, at least we will know whether it's completely destroyed or not. So if someone knows how to factor the Core Strenth data, we should have a conclusive answer.
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Just yesterday LOAF tried to beat it into everyone's heads that this isn't how a flashpak works. It superheats oxygen. It doesn't batter down shields nor partially destroy ships into chunks. We've seen how it works on tiny transports and things more massive than the Dreadnought. It probably incinerates the ship, nothing more, nothing less.
 
Ok, so the official rating should prob. be question marks to be more accurate? It may be possible to assign an "at least ??? cm's" to it by using the Vesuvius as a reference. I also wonder if you could use the Sol system base from the last mission as a reference since this base actually has a cm rating and could be compared in size to Ella (if smaller, then you could use the cm's here and write at least ??? cm's?). You could especially assign the Sol system base as "at least" if you're able to use the flashpak on it by not using it on either the Superbase or the Vesuvius (though I don't know if that's possible). I was still wondering how core strength comes into play? Is that how much damage you must deal to the ship in total? Or maybe that much after breaking the armor? If neither of these, what's the significance of this rating?
 
The core strength lies beneath armor. And it's not really relevant to this thread because the values of the flashpak were an arbitrary hidden game mechanic. If the Flashpak were in WC3 or the Dreadnought in WC4, the values would be different. It's not the same as missile damage rates versus fighter shield strength and whatnot.
 
Ok, so the official rating should prob. be question marks to be more accurate? It may be possible to assign an "at least ??? cm's" to it by using the Vesuvius as a reference. I also wonder if you could use the Sol system base from the last mission as a reference since this base actually has a cm rating and could be compared in size to Ella (if smaller, then you could use the cm's here and write at least ??? cm's?). You could especially assign the Sol system base as "at least" if you're able to use the flashpak on it by not using it on either the Superbase or the Vesuvius (though I don't know if that's possible). I was still wondering how core strength comes into play? Is that how much damage you must deal to the ship in total? Or maybe that much after breaking the armor? If neither of these, what's the significance of this rating?
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No, it's not possible to assign a centimeter value because that isn't how the weapon works: the Flash-Pak uses the ships own hull to ignite the internal atmosphere, via a process similar to strip-fusion.

It is not burrowing through the hull, knocking down the shields or trying to damage the superstructure -- a centimeter value would only serve to compare its ability to do these things. In that sense, you could even say that it has either a "0 cm" value for inflicting damage on shields and armor...

We don't know the size of Ella, but it stands to reason that a "Superbase" is larger than an ordinary "Starbase"... which mass in at 650,000 tonnes. Compare that to the 290,000 tonne dreadnaught (and regardless of bases, consider that the Vesuvius-class is nearly as massive... 250,000 tonnes).

If you want a completely theoretical 'what if' way for the Hvar’kann-class to survive a flash-pak hit, you could decide that it has multiple unconnected portions containing separate atmospheres... and that the flash-pak would only destroy the one attached to the portion of the hull it effects (and that any munitions/stores it ignites would not be enough to destroy the rest of the ship). Note that we do not know of the ship having anything like this.

(Often overlooked sidenote: the proper name for the weapon is the "Internal Atmosphere Flash Ignition Bomb")
 
Just to make sure I understand your explanations of the torps. and the "ship's database" stats: According to the stats on the Vesuvius, using ChrisReid's definition of Core Strenth and the understanding that torps evade shields, the Vesuvius with an armor rating of 4,000 cm's and a Core Strenth of 6,000 cm's would require 5 torpedos @ a damage rating of 2,000 cm's each to destroy it? That would explain why when I used a Dragon without the Flashpak and fired everything I had at it it still didn't explode (I won't get into how it never exploded even though I left the comp. firing on it for hours with my guns- prob. has something to do with the "phase" rating of the shields or something)
Bandit LOAF said:
it's not possible to assign a centimeter value because that isn't how the weapon works
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Ok, understood. It might be a good idea to talk to the powers that be then, just to avoid this type of confusion and to add more credibility to the ratings- though to be fair, it's likely this is the last time a conversation will revolve around the Flash-Pak's damage rating. It prob. should be changed though at least for the sake of future fan mods and fanfic which may want to use Flash-Paks in unique scenarios. Maybe in place of the damage rating, an explanation of it's use could be substituted? Damage= Ignites the atmosphere inside of ships... or something along those lines.
 
Just to make sure I understand your explanations of the torps. and the "ship's database" stats: According to the stats on the Vesuvius, using ChrisReid's definition of Core Strenth and the understanding that torps evade shields, the Vesuvius with an armor rating of 4,000 cm's and a Core Strenth of 6,000 cm's would require 5 torpedos @ a damage rating of 2,000 cm's each to destroy it? That would explain why when I used a Dragon without the Flashpak and fired everything I had at it it still didn't explode (I won't get into how it never exploded even though I left the comp. firing on it for hours with my guns- prob. has something to do with the "phase" rating of the shields or something)
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The Vesuvius is flagged invulnerable in every mission except Sol 1 -- that's almost certainly why you wouldn't be able to destroy it with five torpedoes.

"Core strength" is a fairly meaningless stat - because a ship can blow up at any time after the core starts taking damage. It would be rare for it to *actually* take 6,000 points of damage to destroy the ship. (Also note that there's all kinds of exceptions -- the amount of damage weapons will do changes in-game based on difficulty... and different points on ships take different amounts of damage. Various points on capships also have a 2X damage modifier -- firing at the bridge, thrusters or any internal point will deal twice as much damage in the game engine (ie, a torpedo wouuld do 4,000 damage points).

Ok, understood. It might be a good idea to talk to the powers that be then, just to avoid this type of confusion and to add more credibility to the ratings- though to be fair, it's likely this is the last time a conversation will revolve around the Flash-Pak's damage rating. It prob. should be changed though at least for the sake of future fan mods and fanfic which may want to use Flash-Paks in unique scenarios. Maybe in place of the damage rating, an explanation of it's use could be substituted? Damage= Ignites the atmosphere inside of ships... or something along those lines.
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When the WC4 ships database is updated to /ships2 specifications it will include weapons histories that note such things.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
If you want a completely theoretical 'what if' way for the Hvar’kann-class to survive a flash-pak hit, you could decide that it has multiple unconnected portions containing separate atmospheres... and that the flash-pak would only destroy the one attached to the portion of the hull it effects (and that any munitions/stores it ignites would not be enough to destroy the rest of the ship). Note that we do not know of the ship having anything like this.
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This one of the situations I had in mind earlier when raising that point. Without more knowledge there are a thousands ways we could figure out that the dreadnaught could survive in some form.....etc...etc The limited data available does not provide enough detail to wager a guess at what the results might be.

The flashpak is an uber weapon that serves a purpose during one period. Maybe if it had been developed near the end of the kilrathi war it could have served some good but once Vesuvius level armor came onto the scene it lost most of its positive attributes. It is really only well suited as some kind of terror weapon

I'd still rather have a 10 meter long Mk IV or Mk V torpedo slung under my fighter than some oversized frisbee...
 
Dundradal said:
I'd still rather have a 10 meter long Mk IV or Mk V torpedo slung under my fighter than some oversized frisbee...
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I'd take the uber-frisbee myself. Seemed alot easier even against the Vesuvius. Just out of curiosity, has anyone tried using it against a fighter?
 
Mjr. Whoopass said:
I'd take the uber-frisbee myself. Seemed alot easier even against the Vesuvius. Just out of curiosity, has anyone tried using it against a fighter?
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Man, it's like 1997 in here. :) It won't lock onto a fighter.
 
Sorry, in 1997 I was too busy with college, before I straightened out my priorities and realized that I should be learning about Wing Commander ;). Glad I asked though, because I probably would've wasted time trying it.
 
If it could, though (and the T-Bomb can), and it were to hit the fighter, it'd do exactly what this thread has already implied: 60,000 points of damage.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
If it could, though (and the T-Bomb can), and it were to hit the fighter, it'd do exactly what this thread has already implied: 60,000 points of damage.
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:confused: So it DOES do 60,000 points of damage!!?? Well, I don't feel like revisiting that topic, it was SOOOO March 2nd ;)
 
OH, so you're the one who did that to my rank insignia! Ha, I was posting somewhere else when it happened, that was a pretty funny surprise... kinda wierd, but that's cool..
 
The robot is surelly very happy.
So thew Fpak actually heats some point of the hull and that ignites the atmosphere? Interesting. I thought it made a small hole and them ignited the air. good to know.
 
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